Random Ramblings

The WhatsApp uncle was sitting at the breakfast table dreamily apprising the fare laid out.

Three steaming hot idlis sat in a casserole , a smaller container with sambhar and a bowl of chutney. He could see the quintessential jars for ghee and gingelly oil just within his arms reach .

With one eye on the mobile phone he helped himself to both , the breakfast and the morning messages..

There were the usual goodmorning messages and the evergreen forwards some of them on their third or fourth rounds marked with ” forwarded many times ” on top.

Not that he read these messages but he would certainly be woefully dejected if the numbers decreased.

Messages were the sign of life in the group. Who wants to be part of a message-less group or an admin only group ?

He was just skimming over who all were active; the messengers rather than the messages.

Once in a while , he tapped  that little curved arrow pushing some messages into his other groups to show he too was active.

There was the usual quota of HBD, 🙏,🤣🤣 and the Om Shanti. Rolling on the Floor Laughing was his favourite smilie though it would have been decades since he could sit on the floor, leave alone roll.

He was a true stoic, as his facial expressions hardly gave any hint of the kind of messages he was addressing.

All was well and God was in heaven till it happened . For whatever reason , that day, he felt like having one more idli than his usual quota of three.

His attention , which was 75% on the phone became 100% as his plate got empty.

He had got used to hollering for help into a group for anything like ” why is my pension not credited as yet ? ” Or ” which is the nearest hotel or hospital? “

WhatsApp ethics forbid you to use the wrong group for the right demand, but then he had a group for every issue. (People get upset for ‘ cluttering’ any one group ).  Most people had a clutter of groups to cater for all contingencies.

His better half was in her own groups attending to quotes for positive vibes to start the day , doing her morning roll call of friends, followers and likers.

Scrolling through his myriad groups he stopped at the family group.

Suddenly a bright idea dawned.

He messaged

‘ hw bout nother idli ?! ‘ he posted.

He had become an expert at typing with his hand left but then the thick fingers and the autocorrect had their own minds.

So the message landed on his health cover group, somewhat corrupted.

As it happens , there were others like him waiting for some juicy messages.

Reactions followed…

???

🫪

🤔

Why only one idli ?!

Admin to delete please

Not all are killjoys really.

The science inclined …

Why do you have idlis ? It’s all carbs and hardly any protein..

The nationalist

You brown sepoys always deride desi food.

The Tamil Nationalist…

You northies can never appreciate the kind of perfect food that idli is .. soaked , ground, fermented , steamed …..bla bla …

Some healthy and not so healthy discussion follows on idli as a breakfast dish ..

1. By now , having warmed up to a nice, spicy chat, nobody asks why is someone asking for an idli in this group or in any other group for that matter..

Meanwhile the uncle who initiated this conversation, inadvertently, was sipping a hot cup of filter coffee wondering why his family groups  were  unusually quiet that day…

Today , I was surprised to see the headlines “Mexico slaps 50% Tariff on Indian goods”.

It was even more surprising to the list of goods exported by India. It’s not just aggro products like tea and rice or raw material like buffalo hide. The list includes Vehicles, electrical machinery and mechanical appliances.

We have come a long way from the craze for foreign goods as anything and everything can be made in India.

But when it comes to intellectual products , we still look to the west ; be it software,  research reports ,  or just news reports.

The BBC, Washington Post, and New York Times are regarded as professional and neutral, yet they are no less biased or driven by profit than any other media outlet.

Our “journalists” write for outlets like WP and NYT to criticize our country (not merely the government)  not because they can’t be published here, but because the Western media amplifies this negativity and it is better accepted by our own elite.

Coming to the research reports on economics and society , the less said the better. How  can you explain the report placing India long way behind Palestine and Pakistan in the Happiness Index, unless violence and poverty are considered as sources of happiness.

Recently there is a report stating that 1% of Indians control 40% of the national wealth. Only last year the world bank had come out with the report placing India at #4 in Equality of Income based on Gini index. All these reports are like made to order depending upon the geopolitical scenario. Our own ‘intellectuals ‘ lap up these results as some kind of God’s word.

I don’t say that these reports should be summarily discarded; but let us question the reports from the West as we question our own.

Lastly about the software , Indian tendency for self flagellation reached a peak in criticizing Zoho and its public face and the Chief Scientist ,Sridhar Vembu.

At best Zoho is seen as a poor copy of Google or MIcrosoft.

Nothing can be farther from truth.

I am writing this piece on zoho writer which was launched long before google doc. Similarly , Zoho Show , and Zoho sheets came before Google Sheet and Google Slides. Zoho Cliq was launched earlier as Zoho Chat in 2008 while Google meet came up in 2012.

Since both companies did many updates on their apps , the information available is ambiguous. Whatever be, Zoho and Google were competing with each other for 20 years rather than copying each other’s apps.

Google definitely is miles ahead in some niche segments as You tube and search engine.

Zoho definitely has an edge purely as CRM and SaaS due to some apps like Zoho books, Zoho Invoice etc. There are about 50 products for office productivity.

Yet Zoho and its CEO face criticism in our country , not due to any  technology yardsticks but because Sridhar Vembu is seen in Veshti in public. It is seen as showcasing cultural nationalism! To be considered a CEO in India one has to be in Suit and Tie ! How ridiculous can it get !

It’s time we stop running after ‘phoren’ views and ‘phoren’ software just as we are coming out of the craze for ‘ phoren’ goods.

It’s time we started trusting Indian Software like Zoho products !

But then…

Man the Unknown is a classic written by a leading French surgeon and biologist in 1935 , highlighting the aspect of how little we really know about the human body.

Science has made huge progress since then but the question remains .. “Do we really know enough about the human body to lay down  binding  rules for the whole world.

Your Body Already Knows is a written in 2025 by a successful  practitioner  of Ayurveda from US. Yes, to be taken seriously one has to speak from Texas rather than Tenkasi.

Recently , the Chief Scientist of Zoho Corporation was in  controversy over his skepticism of a few vaccines like HPV among others . He also suggested that the rise in autism in the United States had something to do with the increase in Vaccine shots administered to infants in US. As always , the critics , who are anything but scientists cried “Anti- Science” , “Science illiterate” and of course “Sanghi at heart”

Since when questioning has become Anti Science ? Science is all about forming a hypothesis , then questioning that hypothesis  and proceeding to prove it one way or the other through experiments.

One Tweet on this issue   is definitely worth pondering over ….

…..To understand why medicine is so complex, let’s make a crude simplifying assumption that there are only 100 biomarkers that are important (in reality there are vastly more). Let’s also crudely assume each marker is allowed only two values. That gives us 2^100 possibilities, which is about 10^30. That is vastly more than humans that ever lived. And this is with the extremely over-simplified model. We face a practical infinity of possibilities. In reality, no two patients are ever really alike. No statistical model can give you very high confidence on how to treat. That is why AI can never treat patients, because human doctors exercise something called “clinical judgment”. That judgment is what enables a doctor to tell us “this is not a serious issue, get good sleep” vs “this definitely needs deeper investigation”. That judgment is hard. Often they cannot even explain why they arrived at this but great doctors have that intuition. The entire Big Medicine is about systematically dismantling clinical judgment and convert doctors to mere “protocol pushers”. Great doctors resist this. 

Who is this “Big Medicine”..  It’s the pharma industry and the insurance industry. Scientists and doctors (yes ,they are different entities, doctors are not scientists and scientists are not doctors and most critics who use science as a shield or neither scientists nor doctors ) are bypassed.

It’s against this backdrop that it makes sense to listen to your body as your body knows something that that doctors, scientists and the Big pharma don’t know.

Reading is mostly a passive activity for most people , but it can be an interactive pastime too. Even fiction can be so stimulating ; as against some passive leisure activity, when there is a constant churning of the mind through reflection, debate and criticism .  This is particularly so, when you intend to follow up the read with some serious writing.

Here I  shall restrict myself to fiction.

There are writers who start with a pain point in a society. It is this issue that is aimed to be conveyed from different perspectives. Then characters and events are so developed and the main issue is never lost sight of. There are stretches ,particularly in a long novel, where the writer goes on to some superficial aspects of life, just enjoying writing about the day to day happenings. But a reader is by and large kept anchored to a deep reality.

Jayakanthan says in his foreword to a short stories collection , that he has not written a single word as a pastime. He comes down heavily on his critics who demand that kind of leisure reading .

Once when Mahatma Gandhi was ill , doctors advised him to avoid stress. He asked , if it was okay to read. He was told he could do light reading . Gandhiji asked “ What is light reading ?” 

Then there are other writers who just love writing ; enjoy writing for the sake of writing. They are happy showing to the reader an exceptionally painful or beautiful or maybe a comical scene from day to day life. These scenes may relate to the realities of that period but the events themselves stand out making no moral judgements on the society or individuals.

As someone who loves reading Tamil fiction , I would say, Thi Janakiraman or Jayakanthan fall in the first category while Sujatha or Raa ki Rangarajan would fall in the second. 

Both types of writing can be immensely enjoyable depending on the reader’s mood and inclination . There are times when one  is so carried away by the style of writing that nothing else matters much. 

Recently , I read a book by Raa ki rangarajan “Housefull”  the writer says “Just for the fun of doing things differently, he started with the fourth chapter and let the reader guess the earlier chapters. Then he went on to the third , second and the first chapter , in that order,  to resume the story from the fifth .This was done as a serial in  a weekly magazine. He observes with satisfaction that no reader had any difficulty in understanding the story nor were they any complaints .

That’s pure fun of writing and reading.

Most people would agree that it is the leisure kind of reading that’s more popular. 

There are many writers who need to put in a lot of effort to  write pulp fiction and there are wordsmiths who effortlessly write on serious themes. Whatever be the kind , for a discriminate reader , it shows when the writer enjoys writing as much as the reader enjoys reading.

The pure joy of writing comes, I suppose, when there are no deadlines to meet and no conscious effort made  to make money or to please his readers.

To wind up, here’s an interesting anecdote from Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathi.  

Bharathiyaar wrote his master piece Panchali Sabatham in two parts . The first part was published by Bhartahiyaar himself in 1912. Unfortunately there were not many takers for this book. Around the same time, he wrote a parody on the elites in India aping the British,  “Fox with a golden tail” . The book was written in English just for the fun of taunting the anglophiles in India and the condescending Indo-philes from England.

The book “Fox with a golden tail ” sold like hotcakes ; so much so that there was a huge demand for reprints .

Bharathiyaar’s reaction was typical .

There’s a story that he gave away the English book for free to anyone buying his Tamil masterpiece , Panchali Sabatham.

I must warn the reader that the title is very misleading.

Mhow cantonment is a small place and most often the morning walkers cannot avoid meeting and greeting every other walker and there are times you meet more than once in a single session. It’s generally a wave or a nod without breaking your stride.

On one such nod, something made me stop. The lady’s face was full of questions and it was obvious that she was trying to put them into words. “Aren’t you handling that insurance for Jupiter ?” or words to that effect.

I have heard of mangal- yaan and Chandra -yaan , but Jupiter -yaan was still light years away. It took some time for me to connect the dots. Yes, I am part of the organization facilitating purchase of health cover for veterans and this health cover policy gave the insured access to Vishesh Jupiter Hospital, currently the most preferred hospital in Indore.

For years , veterans have known nothing except the military hospitals , though they were some of the best hospitals in the country during the socialist era, pre – 1990. Post 2000, the private hospitals came up in a big way and today hospitals are not just for medical treatment but are competing with hospitality industry in services providing comfort and good life .

Despite the huge progress the country has seen in health care facilities, veterans covered by ECHS have very few empanelled hospitals , particularly in tier 2, tier 3 cities.  So, the idea of  five star hospitals is always a talking point . 

During our morning walks , I hear as much about the cuisine at Jupiter hospital Cafeteria as about the medical facilities. One also hears about the wide range of rooms available for an in patient. A hospital is no more a place just for medical treatment. 

Most multi specialty hospitals remain out of the reach of veterans depending solely on ECHS. Under the circumstances the health cover provided through our organization , Sainik Seva Samiti is certainly a passport to Jupiter.

As I sat watching  the last sunset of 2023, musing over the year it was,  it occurred to me that the year has been a phenomenal one for stock market watchers.

While the individual stories may differ, there would be a general consensus that the year has given above average returns to hard core professionals and absolute novices , alike .

So , is the stock market turning attractive to the public ? Is everyone trying to get into stocks and mutual funds ?

Curiosity kindled , I turned to Google for some quick figures.

As expected, the MF inflows have increased by 125 %.

The number of demat accounts increased by 27%.

So is it going to be many happy ‘returns’ year after year? Are all the new investors going to be blessed by 15-20% annualised returns for rest of their lives?

The investment world seems to be a happy place and yet we keep seeing threatening, mandatory information wherever you try to enter .

Anecdotes abound in many a family about uncles (never aunts) who went bankrupt due to Dalal Street.

There are many who believe, not without reason , that stock markets are gambling dens .

So, what’s the truth ?

Who makes money and who bites the dust?

I am sure many would have come across the book ” Psychology of Money ‘ by Morgan Housel.

The author states emphatically that it’s all in the mind .

That’s the theory and today I saw it in the real world.

A friend of mine has a mutual fund portfolio created for him by somebody who is now not available to monitor the same.

The friend never bothered to check how his investments were faring.

I , a confirmed technology addict cannot refrain from checking through various apps and websites on how my modest portfolio was faring . At times it happens thrice a day and gets too boring despite the high that Dalal Street gives.

Looking for something to do, I casually enquired the friend about his portfolio and as expected I got an indifferent reply.

With some effort and the magic of internet I could compute his returns in minutes.

It was a ‘Wow’ moment as the last nine months had given him a whopping 50 % returns and he was not even aware of it. In simple terms, at this rate, his money was getting doubled in a year and a half.

That’s the kind of returns any mutual fund manager would be proud of any day.

What did he do right? He just left it alone by design or default.

What happens when you don’t leave it alone?

A human mind is hardwired to lose money in stock markets, sometimes at an astonishing pace.

When the stock / MF moves up a 10% the fear of losing that 10% says ‘ sell , sell !’

When it moves another 10% , (after you have sold) the fear of missing out and the greed for more says ‘buy buy !’.

So, one keeps buying high and selling low. In a bull market , this only minimises the profits while in a bear market , this phenomenon can wipe out your capital.

Smart people use  technology to quantify everything ,including emotions !

The market mood index is supposed to show the dominating emotions. Theory says , that a smart investor should buy when the public is in panic and should sell when the public shows avarice.

Will it work ? Unfortunately No.

As on date (01 Jan 2024) , Tech pundits say it’s  Greed that is dominating. Suppose this image goes viral among investors and the multitudes start selling , the indicator itself will be affected showing ‘fear’. That would mean ‘start buying’.

So in the age of technology and social media any action based on these indicators will influence the indicator itself !

So, what’s the way out to beat the street , in case you want to be fully invested in the stock markets directly or indirectly?

There are two options :-

The difficult way is to be Buddha like or as a karmayogi would say  ‘ be like the water on Lotus leaf; be there but totally detached ‘. See the ups and downs and the wild swings but don’t give in to greed or fear. It’s easier said than done.

A more human way would be to just invest and forget about it ; and probably that’s what my friend did right .

It would be fun to see how the new investors behave in a bad year.